Wireless communication devices enjoy relatively widespread use. Cellular phones are becoming commonplace. Many users connect their laptop computers to wireless local area networks (WLAN) at home and on the road. Motorists use wireless earpiece headsets for hands free calling operation while driving. Indeed, many automobile manufacturers provide hands-free operation integrated directly with the vehicle.
These devices traditionally would operate under one of a number of different networking protocols. WLAN devices for example typically operate under one of the various Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard wireless protocols, first promulgated in 1999. These protocols include IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11n, and 802.11g and operate at different spectrum bands and/or different multiplexing or spread spectrum schemes. The protocol coined WiFi allows one to establish a WLAN. Commonly, WLAN devices are used in an infrastructure network topology, in which communications are routed through a host, base station, or other access point. Another wireless protocol is the Bluetooth protocol, which is commonly used in an ad-hoc network topology configuration for peer-to-peer communication between devices, such as between a cellular handset phone and a wireless earpiece headset. As another example, the near field communication (NFC) protocols are for peer to peer communication between two devices in near proximity to each other. Either network configuration may support any number of devices including laptop computers, handheld computers, printers, storage media, and other network equipment, such as hosts, routers, switches, etc. In some examples, such as with Bluetooth protocols, the wireless devices may be handheld communicators like cellular telephones or walkie-talkies.
More recently, communication devices have been designed to support multiple network protocols (e.g., Bluetooth, WLAN and NFC) in the same device. For example, a cellular phone may be able to send and receive voice data with a headset over a Bluetooth channel and separately send and receive voice, video, image, text, and other data over an 802.11 channel. Moreover, such device often include other wireless communication features, such frequency modulation (FM) broadcast radio reception, for example.
Generally, wireless devices may operate using many different power sources. Some devices use a constant AC power source, while others operate off battery power, while others operate off of either. With the variety of power sources for devices on a network, power consumption has become an important aspect of network operation and thus an important aspect of wireless device operation.